Distinguished Engineer, AI Threat Defense

Thomson Reuters•Frisco, TX

9d•$228,000 - $424,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Distinguished Engineer, AI Threat Defense is a senior individual contributor and technical authority within Thomson Reuters’ Cyber Defense organization, reporting to the VP of Cyber Defense. The role shapes how the company anticipates, detects, investigates, and responds to threats affecting AI-enabled products, services, and enterprise operations. It has no direct reports and leads through hands-on engineering, architecture, collaboration, technical judgment, and mentorship. The role evolves core Cyber Defense capabilities to address AI-specific threats and applies AI responsibly within established detection, investigation, and response processes. It works across SOC Operations, CIRT, Threat Detection Engineering, Vulnerability Management, Attack Surface Reduction, Cyber Threat Management, Product Engineering, Security Engineering & Architecture, and AppSec. The position establishes technical direction, develops defensive approaches and operational capabilities, and embeds AI security requirements, telemetry, and response readiness into development and production environments. The engineer also helps the 24/7 SOC and CIRT use AI responsibly, with appropriate human oversight, evidence quality, auditability, safeguards, and rollback mechanisms. The role tracks evolving offensive AI capabilities and translates findings into practical defensive improvements, while providing technical leadership, mentorship, and representation in customer, regulatory, and industry discussions.

Requirements

12 or more years of progressive experience in cybersecurity, security engineering, security architecture, threat detection, incident response, or a related technical field.
Experience operating as a Principal, Staff, Distinguished Engineer, or equivalent senior technical leader in a large, complex organization.
Strong hands-on Cyber Defense experience, including detection engineering, security operations, threat hunting, security analytics, incident response, security architecture, or closely related disciplines.
Proven ability to establish technical strategy and deliver security capabilities adopted across multiple teams, systems, and operating functions.
Practical experience securing or governing AI-enabled systems, including LLM applications, AI infrastructure, models, agentic workflows, AI integrations, MCP, or comparable tool-use patterns.
Strong understanding of AI security risks, including prompt injection, data exposure, unsafe model output and downstream execution, agent and tool abuse, model and data poisoning, AI supply-chain risk, and AI-enabled social engineering.
Proven experience architecting or delivering AI-assisted detection and response capabilities within a mature 24/7 SOC, CIRT, or comparable cyber defense environment.
Experience strengthening an established security organization and driving adoption across SOC Operations, CIRT, Threat Detection Engineering, Vulnerability Management, and Attack Surface Reduction.
Ability to translate AI security risks into architectural patterns, engineering requirements, detection logic, and actionable incident-response practices.
Experience partnering with Product Engineering, Security Engineering & Architecture, and AppSec to embed security into development and production processes.
Exceptional communication and influencing skills across executive leadership, engineers, architects, analysts, incident responders, customers, regulators, and other stakeholders.
Demonstrated ability to mentor technical professionals and raise the technical capability of a broader security organization.
Experience operating within a regulated, multi-segment enterprise and partnering across legal, compliance, procurement, governance, engineering, and security organizations.

Nice To Haves

Experience in financial services, legal technology, professional information services, or another highly regulated industry.
Experience embedding significant technical capabilities into an established security operations organization.
Hands-on experience building or operating agentic AI systems across multiple LLMs, including open-weight, hosted, and frontier models.
Experience applying AI within SAST, AppSec, vulnerability management, detection engineering, or security operations workflows.
Working knowledge of safely operating open-weight or less-restricted models for authorized internal security research.
Familiarity with frontier AI vulnerability research programs or comparable agentic vulnerability-discovery initiatives.
Active participation in AI security research, open-source communities, industry groups, conference speaking, or published research.
Relevant certifications in cybersecurity, cloud security, AI/ML security, or detection engineering; beneficial but not required.

Responsibilities

Set technical direction for AI threat defense across Thomson Reuters and incorporate AI-specific risks into cyber defense strategy, architecture, engineering practices, and the operating model.
Define how the organization monitors, detects, investigates, and responds to attacks involving AI-enabled products, LLM applications, agentic workflows, models, AI infrastructure, and integrations.
Develop defensive approaches to AI-specific threats, including prompt injection, jailbreaks, guardrail bypass, sensitive information disclosure, unsafe downstream execution, excessive agent autonomy, unauthorized tool use, MCP exploitation, model and data poisoning, AI supply-chain compromise, denial-of-service and denial-of-wallet attacks, model/prompt/IP theft, and deepfake-enabled social engineering.
Partner with Product Engineering, Security Engineering & Architecture, and AppSec to establish secure, observable, and defensible patterns for AI-enabled applications, services, infrastructure, agents, and tool-use workflows.
Ensure AI security requirements, meaningful telemetry, and response readiness are incorporated into the software development lifecycle and production operating environment.
Strengthen security telemetry, detection engineering, monitoring, incident investigation, and response practices to identify and contain AI-related threats.
Architect responsible AI use within the existing 24/7 SOC and CIRT operating model to improve triage, investigation, decision-making, response execution, and analyst effectiveness.
Develop detection content, security analytics, investigation methods, playbooks, and response workflows for SOC and CIRT teams handling AI-related security events.
Maintain human oversight, evidence quality, auditability, safeguards, and rollback mechanisms as AI capabilities are adopted within Cyber Defense operations.
Track emerging offensive AI capabilities, adversary tooling and adoption, AI vulnerability research, and broader threat-landscape changes, translating findings into defensive improvements.
Provide technical leadership and mentorship across Cyber Defense to increase capability in AI security, detection engineering, threat analysis, and incident response.
Influence technical decisions through architecture reviews, technical standards, engineering collaboration, design guidance, and communication with technical and executive stakeholders.
Represent Thomson Reuters in customer discussions, industry groups, regulatory engagements, and AI security communities.

Benefits

Flexible hybrid work arrangements for office-based roles.
Work from anywhere for up to 8 weeks per year.
Flexible vacation and paid time off.
Two company-wide Mental Health Days off annually.
Access to the Headspace app.
Retirement savings plan with company match.
Tuition reimbursement.
Employee incentive programs and possible annual bonus based on enterprise and individual performance.
Resources for mental, physical, and financial wellbeing.
Two paid volunteer days off annually.
Health insurance.
Dental insurance.
Vision insurance.
Disability insurance.
Life insurance.
Paid holidays.
Parental leave.
Sabbatical leave.
Flexible Spending and Health Savings Accounts.
Fitness reimbursement.
Employee Assistance Program.
Commuter benefits.
Adoption and surrogacy assistance.
Employee Stock Purchase Plan.
Optional hospital, accident and sickness insurance, paid 100% by the employee.
Optional life and AD&D insurance, paid 100% by the employee.
Group Legal Identity Theft Protection benefit, paid 100% by the employee.
Access to a 529 Plan.